ScienceCache
Vol. 180
Sept. 9, 2004
IN HOT WATER? TRY “FLUXION” FOR SURVIVAL
Dipping your hands into 160-degree water is guaranteed to give you an
immediate and severe scalding -- unless you're one of the few species
of bacteria that manage to thrive in temperatures that would maim or
kill the rest of the Earth's inhabitants. How these heat-loving bacteria
manage to survive such intense temperatures has puzzled scientists for
decades, but chemist Kara Bren has uncovered a trick proteins may use
to bolster bacteria against the searing heat. "We've found a protein
with a section that is flapping back and forth between two configurations
like a flag in a storm," says Bren. "Nobody expected to find
this. We've always expected high-temperature proteins to be rigid to
bolster their structure in such an extreme environment, but we're seeing
this unusual motion for the first time and it's opening up new ways of
understanding how life manages to adapt to even the harshest environments." The
flapping process, called "fluxion," is the flapping of an amino
acid about an iron ion within the protein, which is found in a bacterium
that lives in hot springs in Japan. Fluxion has been observed in small
synthetic molecules, but not within a protein. Bren believes the scalding
temperatures of the native cell's hot springs contributed to the protein's
bizarre development. "It may seem counter-intuitive, but having
motion-enhancement in a protein like this could help stabilize it in
extreme environments by increasing its inherent disorder," says
Bren, who published her study in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences.
Full story
PHYSICIANS FAVOR FLU VACCINE FOR INFANTS, TODDLERS
Doctors across the United States are mostly in favor of a recommendation
to vaccinate healthy infants and toddlers against the flu, but they are
concerned about costs, parental vaccine fears, and how to let families
know about the flu vaccine recommendations, according to a study published
this week in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. For years
physicians have been debating the pros and cons of routinely including
flu vaccines in an already crowded childhood immunization schedule. Sharon
G. Humiston, associate professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics,
surveyed the opinions of pediatricians and family physicians before the
current recommendation was made to routinely give all children 6 to 23
months of age influenza vaccine. Fifty-eight percent of the doctors who
responded favored expanding the recommendations to include healthy infants
and toddlers. But doctors identified several potential barriers, including
cost and parental concerns about vaccine safety. In addition, unlike
other vaccines, the flu shot must be repeated each year, another potential
barrier.
Full story
LASER LAB TRANSFERS CAMERA TECHNOLOGY TO LOCAL OPTICS FIRM
A camera designed by researchers at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics
to take incredibly quick snapshots of the giant OMEGA laser in action
has been licensed exclusively to a local business, Sydor Instruments,
LLC, to commercialize the technology. “We’re very excited
about this technology,” says Michael Pavia, president of Sydor
Instruments. “We’re proud to be able to take local research
and turn it into a commercial product that is eagerly sought after worldwide.” The
device, called Rochester Optical Streak System (ROSS), is a camera that
takes in light from very brief events and turns it into data rather than
an actual picture. At the laser laboratory, the streak camera records
how tiny pellets of fusion fuel react when they are hit with different
laser speeds and energies. This high-speed “snapshot” occurs
in less than a billionth of a second. Other uses for streak cameras include
particle accelerator experiments, catching chemical reactions in mid-process,
and the measurement of light-based technologies, such as those used in
the telecommunications industry.
Full story
PROTECTING PATIENTS WORLDWIDE FROM GLAUCOMA
The physician who revolutionized screening methods for glaucoma nearly
20 years ago has patented a new device aimed at detecting glaucoma, a
leading cause of blindness. Steven Feldon, director of the Eye Institute,
has received U.S. patent # 6,776,756 for a new tonometer, a device that
doctors and optometrists use to measure pressure inside the eye. When
pressure becomes too high, the fibers of the optic nerve begin to die,
and patients develop glaucoma, which can leave patients blind if left
untreated or undetected in its early stages. Feldon previously developed
the Tono-pen™, a portable tonometer that doctors have used worldwide
to measure eye pressure in millions of patients. The easy-to-use device,
about the size of a pen, quickly became the most widely used portable
tonometer for physicians, allowing a health professional with minimal
training to do the test on a patient virtually anywhere. The new portable
device, called the Newton™, keeps the portability of the Tonopen™ but
boosts the accuracy of the device to a level previously seen only in
bulky, more expensive systems. Later this month doctors at the Doheny
Eye Institute at the University of Southern California will begin testing
the Newton™ on patients, comparing the device to more established
technologies.
Full story
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